Poison Ivy
by Au Printemps
Summary: There is a dark secret in the Wildwood, and a girl child has given her heart to it . . . (Based loosely off of Rapunzel.)
1. Chapter One

   Before her first memory of light, before her first memory of breath, there had been the tower. 

   It had always been there, hidden away in the depths of the Wood. It seemed older than the forest that cradled it, older than the mountains, huge giants of stone she had only heard of in old tales, never seen. There was an air about it that suggested the mountains themselves would fall before the tower moved a single inch. It was tall, solid and unyielding, with stones the color of old bones and roots of granite that fingered their way far, far down into the very heart of the earth. And in turn the tower was the heart of the Wildwood. _The_ Wood, for it was the only one around, spreading its dominion until its twisting depths completely enclosed their small land. And it indeed was very wild.

   On some days, if she listened hard enough, she could feel it breathing, feel its heartbeat pulsing through the earth and up into the soles of her feet. And that was her first memory. Dark, warmth, and the heartbeat of the tower pulsing through her tiny body. She never knew her mother's heartbeat.

   At birth she was named Adamina, but as she matured she grew slender and willowy, fair and golden like the autumn ivy. Her mother, and her mother only, took to calling this sole child of hers Ivy. 

    As she would grow, more and more names would amass around her, each one true in a different way. Strangers would see something in her eyes and call her Tara. The people of the village would watch her roam in the Wood and call her Sheridon. But to her father she was still his Adamina, and her mother held her close to her heart with the name of Ivy. And so the girl child thought of herself as. 

   As soon as she knew how to walk she was testing the boundaries of her small world. She was too young to realize it, but the shadows of the Wood called to her, promising her hidden secrets, something beyond the sunlight and open meadows. Her parents were frightened by their tiny daughter's obsession with the Wildwood. Her mother, especially, looked on the forest with fear in her eyes.

   Shortly after her third birthday, a young boy with her mother's raven hair and green eyes appeared at their door. Ivy was placed in her tiny bedroom, where she stood, hugging the wall, listening to the urgent voices rise and fall. Doors opened, and closed, and their stout grey pony was tacked up in the front of their small house. Ivy, still imprisoned in her room, climbed up to the window to watch her mother step into the wagon with the boy on the seat beside her and urge the pony on as if the spirits of the woods were after her.

   Her father, with his early crop of silver hair and his smooth, thoughtful face, picked her up and carried her out to their labyrinthine garden, where he began to work in the radishes. She watched him for a while at first. His eyes, as grey as his hair, were troubled as the sky before a heavy rain, and he absently ran his fingers through his shaggy hair from time to time, a sure sign he was troubled.

   As she watched her father, however, she caught a glimpse of the Wood reaching its black fingers toward their house, and she toddled off towards the back of the garden, captivated. Her father, thinking of radishes and sister-in-laws, did not notice. 

   A solitary vine had reached through a weak slat in the garden fence, prying apart the rotted wood. Ivy slipped through it. As she stumbled on towards the edge of the Wood, the vine slowly withdrew back into the ground.

   As she reached the trees, she slowed down, touching a silvery slice of bark here, caressing a glossy green leaf there. As she went deeper into the forest, more and more of the sun's light was blocked overhead by the gnarled woody creepers. Then, when she was completely surrounded in dappled shadows, she saw a light ahead. Smiling, she went forward faster, clutching at each tree to keep her balance.

   A woman stood before her, in a circle of light where the sun had clawed its way through the top growth to kiss the forest floor. But the sunlight did not touch her. She smiled lovingly at the little one, with hair as black as Ivy's mother's, and a flowing white dress clinging to her. She knelt, opening her arms towards Ivy, her smile drawing Ivy nearer as a moth to a flame. Just before she reached the woman's arms, however, the woman stood up, flowing away into the undergrowth to the right, and off the path. Ivy fluttered after.

   The lady in white led Ivy on farther into the forest, farther than she had ever moved her chubby baby legs before. But as the forest closed more and more around her, her little legs did not tire. Something seemed to be urging her on, and she moved within the forest with more grace than she ever had before. 

   The woman stopped and turned a smiling face back at Ivy, wildflowers and ferns hugging her skirts. Ivy slipped through the last of the protecting undergrowth and stumbled out into the glade that the woman had led her to. The ferns rose up over her head, and she was surrounded by exotic flowers the color of blood. But neither of these she saw.

   A tower rose up above her head. Up, up, it seemed to reach forever into the sky and down, down forever into the ground. She wondered at this strange creature that stood so tall and stared down at her, speaking of forbidden riddles and old, old eyes that looked on nothing with surprise. She waded through the ferns to it, laying her hot cheek against an unexpectedly cool surface. Here the heartbeat throbbed strongest against her ear that she had heard all her short life.

  The shadow the tower cast wrapped around her. The warm air of the clearing flowed across her, covering her small form curled up against the tower as a mother would tuck a blanket around her child. The woman, forgotten by the softly sleeping baby, gazed at the dreamer, her warm, loving eyes hardening, and her smile turning colder than the stones Ivy's cheek lay upon. Her white robe faded to grey as she disappeared, melting into the black shadow of the tower.


	2. Chapter Two

  The baby slept on beside the tower, through the day and into the twilight. Then, as the last finger of the sun made its way over the tops of the trees, the breathing silence of the glen was sundered when something fought its way through the protecting circle of trees.     

  Ivy's mother, leaves caught in her black hair and streaks of dirt on her brown dress, entered the clearing, breathing hard. Her frightened eyes swept across the clearing. She gave a painful laugh as her eyes spied Ivy nestled in the ferns, and she ran to the tower side to reach out and pick her babe up. 

  As she pulled Ivy up to her, a thorn dug into her skin, creating a long tear from her elbow to her wrist. Geneviene gasped and set her child by her feet, clasping a hand to stop the blood that welled up red. She glanced back at the tower, holding her injured arm protectively against herself. The vines that laced up the tower's wall were free of any thorns. It was as if the tower had grown teeth and bit her.

  She pulled her hand away from the cut, and blood dripped down it to land on and mingle with the crimson petals of the flowers that flourished near the tower. Her entire palm was stained red.     

  Ivy stirred, opening her eyes to smile sleepily up at her mother. Her smile wavered as her vision blurred. Memories of a dark-haired woman flowing white merged with the brown-clad figure of her mother. Ivy's smile dimpled. The lady who had led her here had come back to take her home, she thought. Pretty lady…

  The answering smile Ivy's mother had worn when her daughter had waked disappeared, to be replaced by fear. She could read that look in Ivy's eyes. Ivy did not recognize her mother. She saw some other. Geneviene cradled Ivy, staring stony-faced up at the stony-faced tower.

"She's mine…" she whispered, clasping Ivy tighter.

  The tower made no answer. Geneviene walked slowly backwards, staring up at its heights far above the trees, then turned and ran out of that place as fast as her sore feet would bear her.

  The forest seemed to clear more readily for her then, but as she ran on, dangerously tilting ground and whirling trees forced her to stop from time to time. The dizzy spells confused her even more, as the events in the forest spun round her head until she too wondered if she was really Ivy's mother, or some spirit bearing her away to a land beyond ken. Her speed slowed, and she left a trail of blood dew on the leaves behind her as she drifted through the forest.

  Her husband met her at the fringes of the forest, taking Ivy and guiding Geneviene home. When he saw Ivy's bloodstained smock he searched her for wounds, but Geneviene gave a high-pitched, delirious laugh, showing him her sliced arm and staring at him out of white eyes, the pupil shrunk to a black point. He shivered, wondering at what had happened since he last saw her diving into the lightless forest to find Ivy.

  It took them an hour for the usual fifteen minute walk between forest and house. Geneviene would stop, staring into the forest as if she saw something there, shake all over like a nervous horse, then take off toward the house, tripping several times until she fell. She would lay there, face pressed against the grass, until her husband picked her up and the process would be repeated all over again. It was the longest hour he had known yet.

  When they reached the house, Geneviene curled up in the only padded chair, staring at the fire he was building with unfocused eyes. Even when the fire licked the logs eagerly and sent out a cozy warmth she still shivered. He handed her a mug of spiced milk he had been warming by the fire, and she looked full into his face with more of a living look to her than he had seen since she stepped out of the Wood.

"Ronan…" she said.

  He smiled at her, relieved, pressing the mug into her hands. He sat down into a chair opposite hers, and placed Ivy on the floor between them. The confused look was back on Geneviene's face again, and she looked down at the cup of milk in her hands as if she was wondering what to do with it. Ronan leaned closer, guiding the mug to her lips.

"Geneviene, what is it? What happened? Did something bite you? A snake?"

She laughed her humorless laugh as Ivy looked back and forth between them.

"The tower. The tower bit me. It bit me." She stared down at her arm, letting the mug slide from her hands. It spilled milk across the wooden floor, where it reflected red in the firelight. She stared down at it, wondering if the cup was bleeding as she was.

  She's feverish, he thought. He half-carried her to their bed, wetting a cloth with cool water and placing it across her forehead. Ivy toddled in after him, clutching one of the posts of the bed as she rested her chin on the top of the bed, staring at Geneviene. _What was wrong with her mother?_

  Ronan tended to her wound, pulling a tourniquet around her arm. Once beneath the covers, she lay silent, clutching the blanket with white fingers as he cleansed the long gash with more water and an infusion of herbs. 

  Later, when Ivy had been put to bed, Ronan sat up, staring into the fire. Even he could not decide what he saw, but his wife's fevered eyes were in everything. Geneviene, staring up with those same fevered eyes at the dark ceiling, saw blood red flowers and blood red milk. Ivy saw the wild woman who had led her to the tower, so like her mother, beckoning with a warm smile and cold eyes and slim white hands. 

  Nobody slept that night.


	3. Chapter Three

A.N.: Please note that I changed Chapter One to say "Shortly after her third birthday..." in the seventh paragraph, which had originally said second birthday. Small detail, maybe, but I want to make sure I don't confuse anyone. :) I would also like to thank everyone for their great reviews, and yes, Robin McKinley happens to be among my favorite authors. It pleases me very much that this story could remind someone of her beautiful writing. 

  It was still dark when Ivy woke. She lay still for a long moment, listening to the pre-dawn silence. Through the shadows, the dark lifted a little as emerald eyes glimmered behind her windowpanes as two bright jewels. Memories of last night's dreams, of the woman standing silent at her bedside, silent, were revived, even as the eyes disappeared. It was then she noticed the window had been opened a crack, the curtains alive with the moist night breeze. 

  It made perfect sense to her when she climbed up to the sill, pushing the shutters open wider with a slight struggle, and slid down a strong vine to the ground. Ivy needed no guide in white this time, for she knew the way by heart now. She had traversed it many times in her mind since yesterday. 

  The tower seemed to welcome her, if ever lifeless stone could. She sighed as the slow, steady rhythm of the tower once more pulsed through her, warming her even as she shivered in the chilly moonlight. She leaned against its solid mass, letting it support her suddenly weak limbs. She was so tired. Why shouldn't she leave all care, all effort, to solid stone? Living flesh was so much weaker.

  Ivy started as the first shade of pink touched the sky. Dawn. Home. It was time for her to be gone. She ran out of the glade, frightened by her previous thoughts.

  Ivy reached her bedroom window shortly before the sun completely showed its face, and she had little trouble climbing the vine up the short distance to the sill. She closed the shutters as tight as her clumsy baby fingers would allow, not yet acquainted with such things as locks. As the window was shut behind her, the vine that had aided her escape and return was drawn silently back into the damp earth, leaving the brick once more free, rosy in the dawning light. 

  She climbed in her short bed, clutching her eyes shut tight as if that would stop the sluggish pulsation stemming from the center of the forest that reached out to her even in sleep. She slept with it as her lullaby. 

  Ivy's father woke her with his smile. Carrying her to his and Geneviene's room, he sat her in the lap of her mother, sitting upright beneath the sunny sheets. Ivy looked up into her still-pale face, but Geneviene's eyes were not wide anymore with pain or delusions. They looked down at her calmly, seeing her for what she was, and a similarly pale hand lifted from its resting position to stroke Ivy's flaxen hair. Ronan, looking on pleased, frowned and caught that hand as the bandage loosened and he saw the state of the wound underneath. The slice from wrist to elbow was bleeding again, the lips of the cut green and ill looking. Geneviene snatched it away from him, hugging it protectively. 

"Love, I need to clean that wound now," he said softly, pointing to a basin of soap and water and a jar of salve on a nearby stool.

"It's fine, it's fine. Now, if you please…" she gestured toward Ivy, saying the rest with her eyes.

"I won't be staying then. You're better at it, anyways." He hesitated for a moment, looking at her limp arm, but tugged a loose hat around his ears and heavy gloves around his callused hands, leaving for the garden.

  Geneviene patted Ivy's head again, this time with the other arm, as if afraid still of Ronan's concerned watch of her wound. Ivy's eyes drifted shut with sleepy somnolence as the quiet was undisturbed for many minutes. Geneviene was drowned in thought, her eyes on her child but her mind away elsewhere. Through the open window wet grass smells wafted in, and nodding flowers poked their cheerful heads inside at the silent pair. Ivy's eyelids drifted farther shut.

"Edana," her mother said suddenly, and a drooping Ivy straightened up at the word, her sunlight fingered eyelashes fluttering open. She sighed, still half asleep, as a hazy image of blonde-haired woman little older than her mother drifted into her mind. The image called up another, Edana forgotten, of white white gowns and black black hair.

"Pretty lady…"

"Well, yes, I suppose she's pretty."

"No." Ivy nodded with vehemence, unaware of its inappropriateness. "The pretty lady. Where's the pretty lady?" Ivy's mother stared at her suspiciously for a moment, a new thought taking shape. An unruly zephyr smelling of the Wood sped into the room by way of the window, banging the wooden shudders loudly as it passed. Geneviene, startled, dropped the thought, and Ivy returned to thinking of the yellow-haired woman, seeing again Edana's smiling, sunny face leaning over her cradle.

"Your aunt," Geneviene continued after a moment. "You met your aunt once. Do you remember her? Edana."

"Edana. Edana." Ivy nodded, repeating with the word with a slight lisp. Geneviene smiled, an artificial one that was little more than a stretching of lips.

"Yes, Edana. You see, Ivy, that's where I went yesterday. Your aunt needed me very badly yesterday, because she had a hurt like mine." She stroked the cut, staring out the window.

"Snake? Tower?" Ivy nodded again as she said this, trying out the newly acquired movement.

"No!" Geneviene said, more harshly than she intended. Of their own will, her eyes strayed again out the window, to the Wildwood, sitting just beyond their fields. "No," she repeated again, softer. "She has. Had. She had a hurt on the inside." She stopped, choosing her next words carefully, her eyes wide again and her stare unfocused. "Remember your tummy ache after you ate those bad berries? Your aunt was sick like that, only she didn't hurt." Ivy brightened, remembering a word her mother had used when she discovered Ivy eating the plump red berries off of the ivy plant.

"Poison!" 

  Geneviene's apathy dissipated as her daughter spoke that word, and she looked thoughtful, speaking more to herself now.

"I never thought of that. Could it have been?"

"Could have been!" Ivy all but crowed, smiling winningly up at her mother. Geneviene frowned.

"Listen dear…Edana got sick, but she didn't get better. And after awhile it was so bad she went to a place where she didn't have to be sick." Her frown deepened, her eyebrows arched together with the effort, but she kept the wet back. She would not, dare not cry in front of Ivy.

"Can we go, too?" asked Ivy, all seriousness. Maybe in that other place the heartbeat wouldn't bother her. Did the heartbeat bother her mother, too? Was the heartbeat why her aunt left for that other place?

"No, no, we can't go. Not yet. Not for a long while. She went to a place called Death."

  Ivy digested this for a while.

"Death? That's where the kitty went?"

"Exactly. Edana went to the same place Kitty went when he got tired of hunting mice."     Geneviene's forehead smoothed as she said this, relieved that the old grey cat had picked such an opportunistic time to die as a week ago. Ivy curled up in her lap, satisfied with the explanation, breathing rhythmically in sleep. Geneviene, envying her daughter's easy descent into sleep and stroking the greening skin of her cut, watched the green sea of leaves whisper in the Wood. Funny how they were the same color. What were they saying? They were saying something. But leaves didn't talk.


	4. Chapter Four

   Forest. Tower. Mother. Mother in bed, worse and worse, fading away beneath the snowy sheets as white as her skin, white, white, the same color that flowed around the lady, pretty lady, that she sometimes saw at the edges of her sight when she stared at the tower. The tower. The forest. Her mother. The lady. Was the lady sick? Was that why she had not seen her for the last few weeks? The lady's hair was the same raven black as her mother's; was her skin taking on the same greenish tinge as Geneviene's? Green, coloring the white with a sick tinge, spreading over her mother's skin, from arms to shoulders to neck to face. 

   It had been this way as long as Ivy could remember. Remember she did, the same words running around in her head as she clung to cold stone in the warm sunshine. The tower was the only solid thing in her world of haltered hopes and emotions, both changing swift as the tides of a storm. It had been four years from the talk of death and Edana to the reality of death crouching on their doorstep, on their mantle, on her mother's detached face. Four years with poison running through her mother's veins, and she had not died. A little piece of Geneviene slipped away each day. Her smile had been first to go. Even her bitter laugh and sharp tongue eventually disappeared beneath the motionless silence she now lived in, her face ever turned towards the open window. 

   Now Ivy was seven, the oldest she had ever been, she told herself firmly. She never went in her mother's bedroom anymore, not with that stricken sallow face to meet her—or not—no matter how much her father coaxed her. Instead, she had begun turning to the tower. Slowly at first, but more and more, until the heartbeat not her own had become a welcome presence. Ronan had not missed the sole window in Ivy's room, locked at night but always unlocked when light came, Ivy's cheek once more pressed against the pillow. When a distressed Ronan spoke to her, the window stayed locked. But Ronan was not reassured. Ivy's disappearances during the day became increasingly frequent.

   She lived more and more in the Wood, her father too busy with caring for Geneviene to protest. She danced—oh, how she danced—with light feet and a heavy heart, trying to dance away the sorrow and doom and impending sense of wrongness. And for a while, she forgot everything while her feet and hands took wing in motion, the woody vines creating green dimples of shadow that danced across her skin, a color of green not wrong or poisoned, but pure and lovely. 

   Sometimes, she danced for the tower. And smiled to think of it. Ivy liked to imagine that the tower watched her dances with appreciation; perhaps even longing for such lithesome movements as stone could never perform. Lately, however, it had felt almost as if the tower were dancing along with her, within her. Its pulse had been growing stronger and faster the last couple of days, exciting her to leap higher and spin faster until she felt all chains that had bound her to the earth had been loosed, and she was floating up to the frosty moon, so like the tower in every way.

   And then the time came when she no longer wanted to dance.

   It was a deceitfully sunny day that saw her ushered to her mother's bedroom quite against her will. But to her surprise, Geneviene was sitting up in the bed, normally pale, green-tinged cheeks a vivid scarlet. Ronan sat Ivy beside her, stepping back to watch them, hopeful for the first time.

   "Will you be well . . .? I mean, without . . . Should I stay?"

   "It's fine, it's fine. Now, if you please . . ." she gestured toward Ivy, saying the rest with her eyes. Ivy shivered as Ronan closed the door softly behind him. It was four years ago all over again. She wanted out of there. She swung her legs over the bedside and stood up, looking at her mother in apology before she turned to go. It was a wrong move, for Geneviene's eyes seemed to pin her to her spot.

   "Ivy, I have something for you."

   Ivy shrunk away from her mother, her eyes wide and questioning. Geneviene clutched the item hidden in her hand tighter, and a minute stream of green fluid escaped her grasp to flee down the side of her hand, as if crying in her place. Her daughter feared her. What kind of monster was she that her own daughter feared her? 

   She rose from her bed to walk nearer to Ivy, but instead caught her reflection in their only mirror. Who was that person who stared back at her? Certainly not she. When last Geneviene had smiled back at herself from the confines of a mirror, she had been pretty. She reached forward to touch that other her with a thoughtful finger. Ivy was right to think her a monster. She slammed the surface of the mirror with her palm, causing cracks to split her image into pieces and more blood to dot her hand. She turned away from it, and Ivy, and the world, instantly regretting her outburst. Now Ivy had so much more reason.

   But to her surprise, Ivy came up to her, tracing the lacework of cuts on her mother's upward-faced palm, her own upturned face grave, with no fear.

   "I have something for joo, too." She kissed the same palm, hugging Geneviene's arm tight afterwards. Geneviene curled her fingers protectively around the imprint that impulsive kiss had left, and smiled. What a gift. Her other hand opened without hesitation and presented its contents to Ivy.

   Ivy gave a tiny squeal of delight and carefully plucked the duet of leaves from Geneviene's palm. Two perfect ivy leaves, branched off of the same stem, curled over each other to form the semblance of a heart. Ivy was of the age to still take wonder in every dewdrop and spider web, and she caressed the glossy green surfaces, delicately laced through with yellow veins that indicated they had just begun their transition to autumnal gold. Geneviene traced their intersecting paths herself, using the same finger to tap Ivy's nose afterwards, leaving a drop of green sap on its tip as brilliant as a jewel.

   "These two leaves will represent you and me, my Ivy. We are of the same vine in more than one way, and no matter which one of us is plucked, we must cling together." 

   Ivy's grip around her mother's arm tightened, as if she wished to fulfill her mother's request even then. Geneviene walked closer to the window, with Ivy in tow, and stared out across the sunny afternoon towards the wooden fence that was choked with more of the same ivy that clothed their house. 

   "Ivy—" Geneviene's green, green eyes were coldly serious, and she bent to add weight to what she said next. "Ivy," she said again, and a smile softened the marble green glow of her face. "Ivy . . . you are so like ivy in every way. But beware, my ivy-child, because ivy can also be quite weak. Ivy can only live by depending on something else for strength." She stopped for a moment, struggling for words. How could she communicate something of this gravity to a seven-year-old? 

   "I know!" Ivy cried, hopping lightly up and down in excitement. "Da' told me: they find stuff to grow on by 'growing towards the darkest shektor of the 'rizon,' or something like that."

   Geneviene silently thanked him.

   "That's 'sector' and 'horizon,' m'dear. Your father always was quite the botanist. But what I'm trying to say is this: don't live . . . don't be . . . don't try to be like the ivy, that has no will of its own. Use your own strength, or someday you may wake to find you have none."

   Ivy's wide eyes, turned upwards, absorbed all this like a plant reaching its leafy fingers up to summer's rain, what "Da'" said forgotten as she wrapped herself in her mother's pretty words. She did not know what they meant, though they sounded nice, she told herself. But still, images flitted through, weaving in-between the musical rise-and-fall of her mother's voice. Ivy could almost feel the cold stone beneath her hot cheek, echoing _strength, __darkest. _

   "Never let them take the ivy I gave you, Ivy. Your own strength."

   Them? Ivy dared not ask the question. Instead, she stroked her ivy leaves, memorizing every detail of them. Her strength.


	5. Chapter Five

((A.N.: Just a wee note before I let you continue on with the story—for those of you who read Chapter Four anytime before the 21st of December, you might want to consider going back and reading it again, as some major changes have been wrought in it. I'd appreciate it also if you dropped a little note—a.k.a. review—informing me whether you thought it improved or not. For all you that read Chapter Four after the 21st, pretend this author's note was never here.))

   Ivy paced the garden, from the peas to the cabbage to the melons. Although their green-striped rinds jostled positions to tempt her tummy, she ignored them all, intent on her feet as they jabbed impatiently into the earth. 

   A couple more paces, and she was at the fence, staring out thoughtfully into the silent forest, a silence that seemed to reproach her. She folded into sitting position, resting a pale chin on pale hands as she resisted the urge to clamber over the fence and run off barefoot into the forest's depths, resisted the urge to pluck at the wooden planks like a caged bird at its bars.

   Ronan, knee-deep in the herb patch with a burlap sack in one hand, looked on the detainee with a grim satisfaction. He had finally found a way to keep his little bird from fluttering away to whatever-it-was in the forest. He worked on.

   Hours passed. Ivy had finally given up, and lay curled, slumbering in a patch of weeds her father had somehow managed to miss. Ronan was ready to stir her awake and head in to begin their last meal of the day, when a soft voice hailed him from the window.

   "Ronan . . . come in here, quick!"

   He raised his head from his plants enough to view the face of colorless Geneviene in their window, and he spared just a glance at the sleeping Ivy before rushing inside to see what was the matter. 

   Once Ronan had disappeared inside, two things happened at once: Ivy's eyes snapped open, and small smile of triumph crept up Geneviene's face. She flung the shutters out the rest of the way, swinging her light body over the ledge and running to the spot where Ivy was standing, staring in consternation at the mother of hers who looked like a moth as she fluttered towards Ivy in her white nightgown. A moth, or a ghost. A ghost-moth.

   Without an explanation, Geneviene captured Ivy's little hand. She pulled her over the fence after her and winged off into the rapidly darkening forest just as Ronan stuck his head out the open window and yelled after them in fear and frustration.

   In the forest, Geneviene did not abate her pace. Instead, she seemed to increase it, and Ivy nearly flew as she was tugged along after her feather-footed mother. Indeed, Ivy wondered at her mother's strength, she who before had been so sick and lifeless. But that was not all Ivy wondered. As she was whipped along at a breakneck pace through the forest, she also wondered with a certain uncomfortable feeling why they seemed to be heading directly towards the tower. 

   At their pace, it was little time at all before they reached it. As Geneviene broke into the clearing, Ivy fell into a startling illusion: Geneviene was no longer Geneviene. Instead, she was the mysterious woman of the forest, her white raiment making Geneviene's finest nightgown look soiled. Mother and lady firmly separated, however, when Geneviene rushed at the tower and began to beat at it with her bare fists.

   Ivy was startled—she ran towards her mother screaming, but was drowned out. Geneviene's "She's mine! Mine. You cannot have her!" was followed by a gritty silence, as she single-handedly took on the menace that she had deemed the cause of her sickness over her past many years of brooding. She beat at it and beat at it, until her fists cracked and bruised and bled, until Ivy, clinging to her legs and beating at them in turn with her own little fists, resorted to a confused sobbing. 

   She beat at it until her skirt turned red. 

   Her nightgown had long ago ceased to be the pure white of snow: now it was the scarlet-flooded white of snow on which an arrowed deer lay dying. And when she finally crumpled into the bleeding grass like the same, her silence was still dogged and her arms beat instead at the ground. Mud mixed with blood. Ivy, who still clung to her mother's legs, was trapped underneath, and she lay there in the thick, innocent silence of the clearing only broken by Geneviene's frayed breaths. Geneviene's blows to the earth beneath her weakened. 

   Stopped.

   It was cold. It was so cold. 

   Ivy wrapped her arms around herself, shivering, not daring to go near her stony-faced father. A face so stony, it seemed to reflect the diminutive headstone at the edge of their garden, a headstone that marked the freshly turned earth of mother and wife's grave.

   It was a silent ceremony, with only two other attendees. Edana's husband stood beside them, the lines of grief from the death of his wife, Geneviene's sister, still fresh on his face. Edana's raven-haired son stood alongside him. He was nearly a man now at the age of fourteen, and his shy looks toward his cousin around the two men's bulks caused Ivy to grip her late mother's gift, the sprig of ivy, possessively. Her strength.

   When the two men reached an unspoken agreement to depart, Edana's husband left for where he had stabled his horse, and Ronan walked off with no other sign of life than the lifting up and putting down of foot, the bending and unbending of knee. Either he assumed Ivy would follow or had forgotten her altogether in his misery, for he neither called her nor looked back to see if she trailed him back to their empty cottage.

   And she did not; something had caught her interest, something on the gravestone. A tiny engraved ivy leaf decorated the very top of the stone, and when Ivy held up her leaf duet the right one fit it perfectly. It belonged there. 

   In Ivy's mind, there was only one thing to do. And she did it. She carefully plucked the right leaf away from the other and scratched a little hole in the earth in front of the stone with her finger. She patted dirt back over it firmly after placing the ivy leaf in it, and stood up, satisfied. Now just one half of the heart shape was left. Now just one half of Ivy's heart was left. She stared at the grave of both her mother and her leaf for a few moments in silence before spinning around and running off after her father.

   In the earth where the ivy leaf slept, something moved.


	6. Chapter Six

   It did not take many of Ivy's daily visits for her to notice the sprouting of her sown ivy leaf. Against all odds, it had grown, twining itself around the headstone and nearly swallowing it up in its glossy leaves. It had grown just in time to catch a little green before it had to redress in autumnal gold. 

   Ivy took this as a sign, and felt the happier for it. But one look and Ronan brought out the shears, muttering something darkly about the Wood trying to take his wife's dead body as well as—but with a look towards his daughter he clamped his mouth shut and muttered no more. Instead, he opened and closed the shears with a menacing _shing_ sound, advancing towards the innocent ivy vines as a warrior to battle.

   It was not to be, however. Ivy defended her namesake stoutly, placing her own slight body between her ivy and her father's steel. Ronan retreated back to the tool shed; here was an adversary unthought of. The shears went back in, and never threatened the vine-covered headstone again.

   One day, Ivy could not even see the stone for all the gold-veined leaves covering it. She was delighted that day, but with a terrible blow she was distraught the next; a visit revealed all the glory of the climbing ivy utterly vanished. No leaves, no stem, nothing even scattered about the ground. Ivy immediately suspected her father, but he was both indignant and reproachful. She believed his denial of responsibility. He had never lied, especially to her. It was as if the ivy had grown wings and flown away from its perch on her mother's grave.

   She was devastated. She had truly believed that the ivy was some sort of message, some sort of sign from her mother. Silly as it would have seemed to her father if she had told him, she was not so far wrong. For she did not see it, when she was at the grave. She did not see it, the white that flashed in the treetops, nor the same white that could just be barely seen as a flicker, here, there, accompanying her unobtrusively over the next few days.

   Perhaps one of the reasons she did not notice this new follower was the fact that a gradual change had begun to take place when she visited the tower, even when she was away from it. The pulse from the heart of the forest had begun to grow in strength. It became insistent, overpowering even, until she could barely hear the sounds of the world around her for its uncontrollable sound in her ear, in her veins, until her own heart began to throb in sync with it. 

   It was then her mysterious white shadow finally showed itself. It was no longer an inconsistency in the wood's edge, but a very real falcon that followed her closer and closer as it grew bolder. Even this Ivy did not notice until she had to, and when the snowy-white falcon came close enough to her to nearly claim her shoulder as its perch, and that more than once, she turned on it. 

   The pulsing had made her short-tempered, even with her father, and this bird was only another annoyance to her. In fact, the pulse seemed to become even more unbearable the closer it came, until she drove it away with a couple of well-aimed stones. She felt relief then, as the pulse immediately lessened, but she could not stop the inevitable lead in her stomach. Child of the Wildwood as she was, it was the first time she had shown violence towards any creature, living or dead. 

   Ivy did not see the falcon again.

   It was dead of night when her eyes snapped open at some more than subtle change. The tower's heartbeat, and hers, had changed. Quickened, still strong, but as the sound and feeling rose and fell, rose and fell within her, neither was unwelcome. This pulsation was almost like a second breathing within her, around her. This pulsation was far from an annoyance. Instead, it egged her little heart on to a passion it had never felt before. It summoned her in a way no words could, and this time she used the door.

   She was drawn unerringly toward the center of the endless rhythm, and that meant the tower. Her longer legs were now more than capable, and even if she had not known the way by heart, the _Wood's_ heart was unmistakable. 

   Very soon she was at it, pressing herself against the tower, the heartbeat in physical form. Her heart was pushed as close as possible to this heart. This tower, this heart, had always seemed so to her before, but now it seemed to have taken on some sort of capacity for living, breathing. She could almost feel the rise and fall of the stones as life-giving air entered it, exited. 

   And then she could.

   Ivy had not noticed when stone first began to surround her; its embrace had felt so natural. And when the stone softened, thinned, took on just a slight bit of color, she was not surprised to find arms, real arms, there instead of stone. She was not surprised at all.

   When a face bent over hers to place its cold lips on her forehead, she recognized it immediately. It was the lady, the lady who was never real but always there. And now she was. Real.

   She wore a nightgown; Ivy could feel its rough surface on the back of her arms. She wore Geneviene's nightgown. But something was wrong. Ivy backed away out of the motherly embrace in confusion, looked up into the heartless eyes. Something was not right.

   "Ivy." 

   It was not Geneviene's voice, but it was Geneviene's word. Her word, her name for her little daughter. No one else used it. No one. The hesitation in Ivy's one-word reply was evident, but for this woman it was a start, and her smile was not kind.

   "Mother?"

   The clearing they stood in was bare of any sign of stone or tower, and in the forest the leaves were falling with the autumn. And it was cold, so cold.


	7. Chapter Seven

   It was becoming a cold and bleak autumn. The farmers were happy—saying a cold winter would mean a good growing season next year—but Ivy was not so sure. The bitter wind seemed to freeze her thinking. The mists, thicker than was usual even for that time of year, seemed to shroud her very being until she felt she had gone blind.

   It was on such days that she returned to the clearing. Her father was nearly inert these days; indeed, he had not touched their garden—his garden, which had once been his pride second only to his family—since the laying of Geneviene in the north corner of it. He did not notice when Ivy left or when she returned. And she left much more than she returned.

   Even more than her father, her mother had become a fast-fading memory. It is true that at first she thought the stone that came alive that day in the forest was none other than her returning mother. It is true that for a week afterwards Ivy corrected anyone who talked about her mother as if she were dead. It is true that the townspeople gave Ivy strange looks when she did this, and that her father would leave the room in silence. They said she was too old to play these childish tricks, too old to not know death when she saw it.

   But the townspeople did not have to talk about it for long, for this new mother figure to Ivy had been carefully sowing seeds to reap a crop of forgetfulness.

   It had almost become a daily ritual for them.

   "Who am I?" she would ask, sitting placidly in the center of the clearing among the wilted red flowers. The smell of their decomposing bodies, sickly sweet, would fill Ivy's head until she felt quite dizzy.

   "Mother?" 

   The woman would nod.

   "Good. Go on. What do others call me?"

   "Geneviene?"

   This time, she would shake her head.

   "No, I don't know this Geneviene. You know my name. Now say it."

   "Geneviene. Mother?" Ivy's voice would rise a couple of notes in confusion. The smell was getting stronger.

    "No, no. I don't know this Geneviene, you don't know this Geneviene. Who is this Geneviene?"

    "You a—"

    "Who? I don't know a Geneviene. Do you know a Geneviene?"

    "Yes. I . . ." Ivy would stop, confused. Geneviene, Geneviene? Who was Geneviene? She only knew Mother. She caught a whiff of air laced with garden-smells streaming in through an open window, a serious-eyed woman offering her a couplet of leaves; those same eyes saying _Take it_, saying _Strength_. In her vision the window slammed shut, and startled, the green-skinned image was replaced by one of a face bending to kiss her forehead with its cold lips.

   It was then the woman would speak.

   "My name is Vedis. Say it, Ivy."

   "Vedis? Vedis. Mother . . ."

   It was not long before she stopped seeing the vision, ceased hearing the voice that said _Take it, said __Strength._

   The next day, the ritual must have gone better—or worse—than ever, for as Ivy left for home through the rapidly darkening forest, Vedis followed. 

   No matter how skillfully she had sown, the crop had not been to Vedis' liking. Something was holding Ivy back; something was keeping Ivy from being utterly hers. And Vedis thought she knew what it was.

   Even as Ivy reached the door of her little house she was still unaware of her light-footed follower. But Vedis stopped at the doorstep. She could not follow the child in. Something stopped her, something she did not like at all. At all.

   It didn't take long for Vedis to console herself by stationing herself at the kitchen window, where a slouched figure could be clearly seen weeping into the stained wooden surface of the table. Ivy entered soon after; Vedis employed a touch of her own that would make sure neither daughter nor father saw her during the ensuing scene. A shapely spray of ivy now whispered and tapped against the windowpane from where it clung to the sill. Strong, woody ivy, the ropelike ivy men called Lianas. 

   She watched with impassive satisfaction as Ronan rose and turned in anger when Ivy entered, in an attempt to hide the few tears that still squeezed out of the corners of his baggy eyelids with another emotion. She watched as Ivy drew back in bewilderment; read the little lips that formed the words _Mother's not dead; watched as he turned to storm out. Watched, then acted._

   He was in the very process of storming out when the sweet, soft voice hailed him from outside the window.

   "Ronan . . ."

   He stopped in disbelief, afraid to look.

   "Ronan . . . come here, quick!"

   Now he did look, and he did not believe what that look apparently told him. The shutters had been flung open, inward, tapping softly against the walls as a breeze passed through. The Lianas had been replaced by a Vedis who still wore the same nightgown: Geneviene's.

   Ronan took one step towards the window, then another. Vedis did not smile. Ivy's bewilderment was now shock; what was Mother doing here? Mother should be in the clearing. Mother should be in the forest.

   It was forever before Ronan was at the window. He reached out to touch that arm, clinging to the sill, as if he still did not believe she was real; as if he believed with every corner of himself that she was and wanted to tell her that he, too, was real. But as Vedis leaned her head closer to him, eyes closed, he changed his mind. Instead, he closed his own eyes, leaned his own head closer—to kiss her.

   The Lianas curled back around Vedis in an instant, now bedecked with thorns. It curled round and round her, up and up, until it spread a spiny tendril right across her lips. Ronan found that out soon enough. He jerked away as he felt the barbed points enter the tender skin of his own lips, as he tasted blood and saw it drip down his chin to land on his discolored tunic, already splotched once, twice, with tears. He backed away, staring at her in horror. _Bit. I've been bitten. And then, a memory from so long ago it seemed another life: _The tower. The tower bit me. It bit me.__

   He ran out with a wild, inhuman energy, nearly knocking Ivy over in the process. When Ivy was able to look towards the window again, Vedis was gone, and the window was shut.


End file.
